“Throw ladders until you run out of them or window” Has this battle cry helped or hurt the fire service? Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe we, the fire service, need to throw more ladders at fire scenes. But I think we need a better focus. I believe we are coming to a point […]

Lately there seems to be a push against experience in favor of education in the fire service. This push isn’t new, but this wave is riding the coattails of the preliminary results of the first large scale fire attack study, which is at best half way done. Many young inexperienced firefighters and officers are looking […]

How often do we give our fire service saws a soup to nuts inspection and cleaning? I’m sure that there are people reading this with a wide range of answers; once a week or after every use that saw gets completely disassembled, inspected and cleaned, some might say we send it out to a shop […]

What is it that prevents fire departments from throwing ground ladders or aerials? Why do ground ladders remain on the apparatus and aerials remain in their beds at fire calls? Why are RIT teams allowed to stand around like yard gnomes, not being proactive? And on that same vein if 2 in 2 out is […]

We have identified a problem (ladders left on the apparatus) and an initial solution in the first chapter. In the second chapter we talked about some initial considerations for primary laddering and covered some of the basics tactics. In this final portion we will discuss how proactive, aggressive laddering opens the door for aggressive engine […]

In the first section we talked about the lack of laddering at fire scenes and the changes some departments have made to address the issue. Bringing ladders to a fire building is the first step in remedying the problem. The next, and probably more difficult, step is to place them where they will most likely […]

What is it that prevents fire departments from throwing ground ladders or aerials? Why do ground ladders remain on the apparatus and aerials remain in their beds at fire calls? Why are RIT teams allowed to stand around like yard gnomes, not being proactive? And on that same vein if 2 in 2 out is […]

Earlier this month, Virginia State Trooper Chad Dermyer was shot and killed in the line of duty. Trooper Dermyer had served as a police officer in the city where I work before moving on in his career and I started wondering if there were lessons to be learned beyond firefighter line of duty death reports. […]

The company that trains With the face of fire service changing every day fire departments are finding it hard to fit mandatory training into their schedules and budgets. This is shifting the responsibility of company level training to the firehouse and more specifically shifting this responsibility to the company officer. It’s up to the company […]

Some of you may know this but the NFPA is currently in the works of creating a standard on fire attack. It’s proper name is NFPA 1700: Guide for Structural Fire Fighting and it is currently in development with a scheduled completion date of the end of 2016. As we speak a committee called the […]